William McGowan opens the door to the newsrooms at USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other pillars of the “mainstream press” in this carefully researched investigation of how the quest for “diversity” has affected American journalism. Focusing on coverage of the “diversity issues” of immigration, race, gay rights, feminism and affirmative action, McGowan gives a fascinating analysis of what stories get reported and how. Along the way, he dissects the way the press “mis-told” key stories involving figures like Kara Hultgren (the Navy fighter pilot who died after missing a carrier landing), Kelly Flinn (the Air Force officer cashiered for an affair with a married man) and Patrick Chavis (the black physician who was once a poster boy for affirmative action and then had his license taken away because of medical incompetence). “Coloring the News” is an impressively documented and provocative book about how a journalism slanted by good intentions has allowed a narrow multicultural orthodoxy to restrict debate just at the point when information about America’s changing national identity needs to be robust, knowledgeable and honest.
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Coloring the News
How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism
Publication Details
Trade Paperback / 262 pages
ISBN: 1893554287
AVAILABLE: 5/01/2003
- Media: Request a Review Copy
- Academia: Request an Exam Copy
About the Author
William McGowan is the author of Only Man Is Vile: The Tragedy of Sri Lanka (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and Coloring The News: How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism (Encounter Books) for which he won a National Press Club Award in 2002. A former editor at the Washington Monthly, he has reported for Newsweek International and the BBC and has written for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, the New Republic, Columbia Journalism Review and many other national publications.
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